Why is that , that devs are so baised towards Elementalists?

Maybe its because they have some kind of a balance rotation where they decide to make one class really Tier S while keeping most of them tier A as well as making 1 or two tier B? a
because balance is supposed to be a scenario where all classes are evenly strong and its skill which is supposedly supposed to make the difference?

One thing i know is for sure, balancing Ele would take merely 10 minutes as its plainly adjusting by increasing and decreasing value lines untill weaver is a vailable 1v1 class, plainly decreasing massive healing power for more damage would be sufficient. it seems that evs dont /want/ to balance Ele other than trying to avoid making a balance mistake

@steki.1478 said:
If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

Some balancing are mainly about remaking skills with tricky aoe or feature. Some require a whole rework with a core broken ability.
Ele is only numbers

Theoretically speaking though. It is much easier to balance than most game Devs make it look like

It is not.

There are 3 game modes and tons of different interactions.
The fact that ele always have the 4 attunements available make it complicated. Adding dmg to skills to give it viable dps for raids that are rewarding for the risk and complexity of the class might make the balanced version of the build too hard hitting on while being too forgiving. Making the heals/mobility/defense worse to balance the dmg might completely remove the option to be a healer/support/roamer...

There are lots of considerations to be taken, traits and gear sets interactions, runes, sigils, synergy with other classes...

@steki.1478 said:
If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

Some balancing are mainly about remaking skills with tricky aoe or feature. Some require a whole rework with a core broken ability.
Ele is only numbers

Theoretically speaking though. It is much easier to balance than most game Devs make it look like

It is not.

There are 3 game modes and tons of different interactions.
The fact that ele always have the 4 attunements available make it complicated. Adding dmg to skills to give it viable dps for raids that are rewarding for the risk and complexity of the class might make the balanced version of the build too hard hitting on while being too forgiving. Making the heals/mobility/defense worse to balance the dmg might completely remove the option to be a healer/support/roamer...

There are lots of considerations to be taken, traits and gear sets interactions, runes, sigils, synergy with other classes...

If it was so simple you could do in 10min the game would be kitten.

I don't agree with you not even slightly nor do i see how increasing the AA dmg of weaver by 20 percent as well as giving it better dmg on skills like charge while reducing its water 2 skill chain heal by 30 percent wouldYTHING other than making weaver a better suited for 1V1 and more viable overall.

@steki.1478 said:
If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

Some balancing are mainly about remaking skills with tricky aoe or feature. Some require a whole rework with a core broken ability.
Ele is only numbers

Theoretically speaking though. It is much easier to balance than most game Devs make it look like

It is not.

There are 3 game modes and tons of different interactions.
The fact that ele always have the 4 attunements available make it complicated. Adding dmg to skills to give it viable dps for raids that are rewarding for the risk and complexity of the class might make the balanced version of the build too hard hitting on while being too forgiving. Making the heals/mobility/defense worse to balance the dmg might completely remove the option to be a healer/support/roamer...

There are lots of considerations to be taken, traits and gear sets interactions, runes, sigils, synergy with other classes...

If it was so simple you could do in 10min the game would be kitten.

I don't agree with you not even slightly nor do i see how increasing the AA dmg of weaver by 20 percent as well as giving it better dmg on skills like charge while reducing its water 2 skill chain heal by 30 percent wouldYTHING other than making weaver a better suited for 1V1 and more viable overall.

It is, THAT easy

I also completely disagree with you. Increasing damage while nerfing healing is exactly what the balance team is doing and it's failing every time. All you need to do simulate that nerf is put on some dps amulet & runes (eg. berserk/marauder/wizard & scholars/pack) and watch yourself be more useless than before. The only way balancing by "decreasing the defense & increase the offense" is ever going to turn out maybe decent for eles is if you actually make all their attacks hit like a truck (eg. 6k+) on a non-full glass build and then you'll just end up with glass builds that probably hit for 10k+ and a class that plays like a thief/rev, definitely not a 1v1 side noder, and it'll still be arguable at that point whether ele is actually better than those 2 classes due having less mobility and no helpful utilities such as boon removal either. It might also be the case that if it does big damage, play it like a necro in team fights instead, but then it's again arguable whether you're actually better than necros which have useful boon corrupts and a lot more aoe. Unless you want to match that aoe with the obviously worse staff ele whose attacks are not only much harder to land but also have much less innate defense compared to Necro's shrouds.

Eles actually do good damage currently, but only IF that enemy is basically a golem that stands still and don't fight back. It's the mechanics of how ele works as a whole that's making it weak. The 2 main ones are:

Dev's favorite theme of making all its big hitting attacks slow/channeled/stand-still (while simultaneously making a lot of these skills dont actually do enough impact even when they land)

Too many useless skills & traits. Utilities taken in spvp are basically always Cantrips & 1 or 2 better skills from the specialization with the occasional arcane shield/blast. A whole lot of weapon skills, especially water & earth ones, are useless and this doesn't help when you're attunement locked, especially as weaver. Except the Arcane trait line, all other good traits are the specific few ones scattered across different lines that force you to take the whole line just for them. If you look at the trait lines of other meta classes like mesmer/engi/necros for example, they more closely resemble Ele's Arcane where most, if not all, the traits are good and it's more about choosing which one is better for your build within each column. Whereas ele's fire/water/earth/air it's basically "whatever, these traits are all kitten so I just have to pick the least kitten one to actually get to the good ones (eg. Cleansing Water, Smothering Auras, Fresh Air, Lightning Rod, Stone Heart, Diamond Skin)".

The mechanic changes of making skills much easier to land (reducing cast time/giving more ways to stick onto targets if they're using melee weapons), access to more useful boons (eg. fury instead of might), or making all the useless skills such as Unravel & Conjures mechanically better should be the way to buff eles, not number changes. If you want to go about making number changes, there should be no nerfs to any of its current defense (sustain) else you'll just end up with no change, or more likely a net nerf like what the current balance team is doing.

@steki.1478 said:
If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

Some balancing are mainly about remaking skills with tricky aoe or feature. Some require a whole rework with a core broken ability.
Ele is only numbers

Theoretically speaking though. It is much easier to balance than most game Devs make it look like

It is not.

There are 3 game modes and tons of different interactions.
The fact that ele always have the 4 attunements available make it complicated. Adding dmg to skills to give it viable dps for raids that are rewarding for the risk and complexity of the class might make the balanced version of the build too hard hitting on while being too forgiving. Making the heals/mobility/defense worse to balance the dmg might completely remove the option to be a healer/support/roamer...

There are lots of considerations to be taken, traits and gear sets interactions, runes, sigils, synergy with other classes...

If it was so simple you could do in 10min the game would be kitten.

I don't agree with you not even slightly nor do i see how increasing the AA dmg of weaver by 20 percent as well as giving it better dmg on skills like charge while reducing its water 2 skill chain heal by 30 percent wouldYTHING other than making weaver a better suited for 1V1 and more viable overall.

It is, THAT easy

I also completely disagree with you. Increasing damage while nerfing healing is exactly what the balance team is doing and it's failing every time. All you need to do simulate that nerf is put on some dps amulet & runes (eg. berserk/marauder/wizard & scholars/pack) and watch yourself be more useless than before. The only way balancing by "decreasing the defense & increase the offense" is ever going to turn out maybe decent for eles is if you actually make all their attacks hit like a truck (eg. 6k+) on a non-full glass build and then you'll just end up with glass builds that probably hit for 10k+ and a class that plays like a thief/rev, definitely not a 1v1 side noder, and it'll still be arguable at that point whether ele is actually better than those 2 classes due having less mobility and no helpful utilities such as boon removal either. It might also be the case that if it does big damage, play it like a necro in team fights instead, but then it's again arguable whether you're actually better than necros which have useful boon corrupts and a lot more aoe. Unless you want to match that aoe with the obviously worse staff ele whose attacks are not only much harder to land but also have much less innate defense compared to Necro's shrouds.

Eles actually do good damage currently, but only IF that enemy is basically a golem that stands still and don't fight back. It's the mechanics of how ele works as a whole that's making it weak. The 2 main ones are:

Dev's favorite theme of making all its big hitting attacks slow/channeled/stand-still (while simultaneously making a lot of these skills dont actually do enough impact even when they land)

Too many useless skills & traits. Utilities taken in spvp are basically always Cantrips & 1 or 2 better skills from the specialization with the occasional arcane shield/blast. A whole lot of weapon skills, especially water & earth ones, are useless and this doesn't help when you're attunement locked, especially as weaver. Except the Arcane trait line, all other good traits are the specific few ones scattered across different lines that force you to take the whole line just for them. If you look at the trait lines of other meta classes like mesmer/engi/necros for example, they more closely resemble Ele's Arcane where most, if not all, the traits are good and it's more about choosing which one is better for your build within each column. Whereas ele's fire/water/earth/air it's basically "whatever, these traits are all kitten so I just have to pick the least kitten one to actually get to the good ones (eg. Cleansing Water, Smothering Auras, Fresh Air, Lightning Rod, Stone Heart, Diamond Skin)".

The mechanic changes of making skills much easier to land (reducing cast time/giving more ways to stick onto targets if they're using melee weapons), access to more useful boons (eg. fury instead of might), or making all the useless skills such as Unravel & Conjures mechanically better should be the way to buff eles, not number changes. If you want to go about making number changes, there should be no nerfs to any of its current defense (sustain) else you'll just end up with no change, or more likely a net nerf like what the current balance team is doing.

This is a pretty good description of the problems, with a few nice proposed solutions. I'd add that reducing the potential healing of ele can actually be okay, but only if Anet replace the lost sustain with other defensive mechanics that do not lock the ele into healing power. Adding damage to skills is going to be useless as long as you are forced to bunker up.

So much wrong. Balancing is extremely complex. You change something, something else will be affected. Ever heard of causality?

Also, devs biased towards ele? kitten? This class was OP for like 5 years. It is still extremely strong with a kitten of utility thanks to 20 skills per weapon-set. And now for the first time it is in a position where they aren't used to be. Like almost every class has been and people whine. So ridiculous.

@steki.1478 said:
If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

It may very well take 10 minutes per class. Though let's not forget that the people who are in charge of balancing the game have an insuperable ignorance and lack of judgment when inspecting the intricacies of a class, and their place in the health of the game as well as their ability to be fun and interesting. The Elementalist doesn't have any access to quickness? Let's give Reaper and Holosmith permanent quickness! The Warrior is finally balanced? Let's nerf it again! Let's make it so it loses more matchups than it wins by a factor of two. Ele still isn' doing damage after 3 years of not doing damage? Well, let's give fire measly condition clear and nerf The Elementalist's only viable build some more! There is no logic when it comes to this balancing effort. The game is worse this patch than it was the last one and it'll never get better.

I mean, they have a thread where they'd just have to copy+paste... a lot of the suggestions are not over the top at all. Maybe 10 minutes is overexaggerated, but the last... what? Four patches lackes any meaningful change to ele at all, talking from a PVP perspective. It actually feels like they didn't even invest 10 minutes, every other class got more attention.

I agree about the bias. Yes, the time needed would be more anyways, balancing is not that easy.

I also completely disagree with you. Increasing damage while nerfing healing is exactly what the balance team is doing and it's failing every time. All you need to do simulate that nerf is put on some dps amulet & runes (eg. berserk/marauder/wizard & scholars/pack) and watch yourself be more useless than before. The only way balancing by "decreasing the defense & increase the offense" is ever going to turn out maybe decent for eles is if you actually make all their attacks hit like a truck (eg. 6k+) on a non-full glass build and then you'll just end up with glass builds that probably hit for 10k+ and a class that plays like a thief/rev, definitely not a 1v1 side noder, and it'll still be arguable at that point whether ele is actually better than those 2 classes due having less mobility and no helpful utilities such as boon removal either. It might also be the case that if it does big damage, play it like a necro in team fights instead, but then it's again arguable whether you're actually better than necros which have useful boon corrupts and a lot more aoe. Unless you want to match that aoe with the obviously worse staff ele whose attacks are not only much harder to land but also have much less innate defense compared to Necro's shrouds.

Eles actually do good damage currently, but only IF that enemy is basically a golem that stands still and don't fight back. It's the mechanics of how ele works as a whole that's making it weak. The 2 main ones are:

Dev's favorite theme of making all its big hitting attacks slow/channeled/stand-still (while simultaneously making a lot of these skills dont actually do enough impact even when they land)

Too many useless skills & traits. Utilities taken in spvp are basically always Cantrips & 1 or 2 better skills from the specialization with the occasional arcane shield/blast. A whole lot of weapon skills, especially water & earth ones, are useless and this doesn't help when you're attunement locked, especially as weaver. Except the Arcane trait line, all other good traits are the specific few ones scattered across different lines that force you to take the whole line just for them. If you look at the trait lines of other meta classes like mesmer/engi/necros for example, they more closely resemble Ele's Arcane where most, if not all, the traits are good and it's more about choosing which one is better for your build within each column. Whereas ele's fire/water/earth/air it's basically "whatever, these traits are all kitten so I just have to pick the least kitten one to actually get to the good ones (eg. Cleansing Water, Smothering Auras, Fresh Air, Lightning Rod, Stone Heart, Diamond Skin)".

The mechanic changes of making skills much easier to land (reducing cast time/giving more ways to stick onto targets if they're using melee weapons), access to more useful boons (eg. fury instead of might), or making all the useless skills such as Unravel & Conjures mechanically better should be the way to buff eles, not number changes. If you want to go about making number changes, there should be no nerfs to any of its current defense (sustain) else you'll just end up with no change, or more likely a net nerf like what the current balance team is doing.

I would rather take these mechanic changes than a damage buff. As an Ele, I can play smart and throw out good damage. But in sPvP, there is greater importance to sustain than just damage. Increasing their damage will make them more glassy than they already are and that'll worsen the problem. Give Ele's, especially weavers better mechanics!

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:
Also, devs biased towards ele? kitten? This class was OP for like 5 years. It is still extremely strong with a kitten of utility thanks to 20 skills per weapon-set. And now for the first time it is in a position where they aren't used to be. Like almost every class has been and people whine. So ridiculous.

I'm positive the thread is about Ele in PVP so it's been a very long time since Ele has been OP (or even above average)

Best way to see the real views on ele is looking at the build web pages and how often they have been updated about ele. You have builds on places like meta battles that are 3 years out dated showing as one of the best for the class in wvw. This is not just from the devs this is from the player base as well and the community leaders.

I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

@MyPuppy.8970 said:
I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

They very much are by adding in so much ele hate to the game. Less to do with the updates to ele more to do what they added to other classes. Staff ele must run 15k to 14k hp pool in wvw the super glass to be viable. But what happening is that there soo much projcial hate and blocks in the game most of your high risk build dmg is being stoped. MS is not being used because its the end all be all dmg skill but because its not a projcial skill and deals with short blocks.

When you look at other classes who got unblockable to deal with this projcial hate and block spam added to the game its denial to say that ele did not get such things because anet "loves" the ele class.

Lets not get into support builds of tempest and how much is lacks viable boon support and real self stab support making it a very sub part support class.

Anet hates ele or at least dose not think about the ele class when they update this game. I am not sure what is worst being hated or being ignored it all comes out to the same end though.

@MyPuppy.8970 said:
I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

They very much are by adding in so much ele hate to the game. Less to do with the updates to ele more to do what they added to other classes. Staff ele must run 15k to 14k hp pool in wvw the super glass to be viable. But what happening is that there soo much projcial hate and blocks in the game most of your high risk build dmg is being stoped. MS is not being used because its the end all be all dmg skill but because its not a projcial skill and deals with short blocks.

When you look at other classes who got unblockable to deal with this projcial hate and block spam added to the game its denial to say that ele did not get such things because anet "loves" the ele class.

Lets not get into support builds of tempest and how much is lacks viable boon support and real self stab support making it a very sub part support class.

Anet hates ele or at least dose not think about the ele class when they update this game. I am not sure what is worst being hated or being ignored it all comes out to the same end though.

You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

@MyPuppy.8970 said:
I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

They very much are by adding in so much ele hate to the game. Less to do with the updates to ele more to do what they added to other classes. Staff ele must run 15k to 14k hp pool in wvw the super glass to be viable. But what happening is that there soo much projcial hate and blocks in the game most of your high risk build dmg is being stoped. MS is not being used because its the end all be all dmg skill but because its not a projcial skill and deals with short blocks.

When you look at other classes who got unblockable to deal with this projcial hate and block spam added to the game its denial to say that ele did not get such things because anet "loves" the ele class.

Lets not get into support builds of tempest and how much is lacks viable boon support and real self stab support making it a very sub part support class.

Anet hates ele or at least dose not think about the ele class when they update this game. I am not sure what is worst being hated or being ignored it all comes out to the same end though.

You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

lol what are you going to do with scepter autos in wvw, especially fire? ping someone from miles away so they know exactly where you are? your argument might make a little bit of sense if eles can swap weapons but they cant, and staff definitely isn't any more well equip to bypass projectile blocks than other classes that also have ground targeted skills, can just flat out bypass them with unblockable traits/skills, or just switch to a melee set.

@LazySummer.2568 said:
I also completely disagree with you. Increasing damage while nerfing healing is exactly what the balance team is doing and it's failing every time. All you need to do simulate that nerf is put on some dps amulet & runes (eg. berserk/marauder/wizard & scholars/pack) and watch yourself be more useless than before. The only way balancing by "decreasing the defense & increase the offense" is ever going to turn out maybe decent for eles is if you actually make all their attacks hit like a truck (eg. 6k+) on a non-full glass build and then you'll just end up with glass builds that probably hit for 10k+ and a class that plays like a thief/rev, definitely not a 1v1 side noder, and it'll still be arguable at that point whether ele is actually better than those 2 classes due having less mobility and no helpful utilities such as boon removal either. It might also be the case that if it does big damage, play it like a necro in team fights instead, but then it's again arguable whether you're actually better than necros which have useful boon corrupts and a lot more aoe. Unless you want to match that aoe with the obviously worse staff ele whose attacks are not only much harder to land but also have much less innate defense compared to Necro's shrouds.

Except that's not exactly what they've been doing, with regards to your opening sentence. They've been consistently nerfing the healing on Riptide but also on Elements of Rage, various traits in Air, Plasma Beam, Meteor Shower etc. While the initial burst is higher, I think I prefer old meteors for their more consistent damage. Perhaps they've realised they were far too heavy-handed and misguided from March to July and have attempted to reintroduce the damage by putting beefy conditional ferocity buffs in Air but for some builds, the buffs aren't tangible (e.g. Fresh Air scepter). The sword buffs are nice, I suppose.

@LazySummer.2568 said:
1. Dev's favorite theme of making all its big hitting attacks slow/channeled/stand-still (while simultaneously making a lot of these skills dont actually do enough impact even when they land)

I concur. The most prominent examples of this are weaver dual skills across almost all weapons. Staff is the big offender which is why I was so peeved about the nerfs to Meteor Shower. In fairness, they did buff Eruption but there're still many skills that do abysmal damage given the wind-up time (e.g. Pyroclastic Blast, Glacial Drift, Monsoon, Pressure Blast) or provide virtually no utility/incentive for attuning into X/Y (Lahar and Stone Tide). It's piddly damage.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

lol what are you going to do with scepter autos in wvw, especially fire? ping someone from miles away so they know exactly where you are? your argument might make a little bit of sense if eles can swap weapons but they cant, and staff definitely isn't any more well equip to bypass projectile blocks than other classes that also have ground targeted skills, can just flat out bypass them with unblockable traits/skills, or just switch to a melee set.

You probably misunderstood what I meant when I wrote it. Elementalists take staff in WvW because it's the best tool for control and support large amount of players not because it's the best weaponset ever for killing in zergs. It's just silly to argue that it's an inadapted range dps weapon when your main purpose for taking it is different.

NB.: A range elementalist can always slot lightning hammer and use it to bash it's way in a melee fight just like other professions can switch to a melee weaponset. The only side effect is that you can't maintain lightning hammer, that's all (or you can liken that to a very long cool down on weapon swap).

@Dadnir.5038 said:
You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

lol what are you going to do with scepter autos in wvw, especially fire? ping someone from miles away so they know exactly where you are? your argument might make a little bit of sense if eles can swap weapons but they cant, and staff definitely isn't any more well equip to bypass projectile blocks than other classes that also have ground targeted skills, can just flat out bypass them with unblockable traits/skills, or just switch to a melee set.

You probably misunderstood what I meant when I wrote it. Elementalists take staff in WvW because it's the best tool for control and support large amount of players not because it's the best weaponset ever for killing in zergs. It's just silly to argue that it's an inadapted range dps weapon when your main purpose for taking it is different.

NB.: A range elementalist can always slot lightning hammer and use it to bash it's way in a melee fight just like other professions can switch to a melee weaponset. The only side effect is that you can't maintain lightning hammer, that's all (or you can liken that to a very long cool down on weapon swap).

Isn't the current meta wvw zerg build for ele staff DPS Weaver running basically all dps traits and stats? What do you think the point of being dps weaver means if it's not to kill? and suggesting LH as a melee weapon swap is like suggesting other classes should have one of their utility slots taken just to swap between melee and ranged weapons.

@MyPuppy.8970 said:
I don't think they're biased, they put time and efforts in new skills/visuals/animation, maybe too much since long animations is really what drags the specs down. Numbers are fine in my opinion, problem is the game doesn't revolve around sitting golem dummies.

They very much are by adding in so much ele hate to the game. Less to do with the updates to ele more to do what they added to other classes. Staff ele must run 15k to 14k hp pool in wvw the super glass to be viable. But what happening is that there soo much projcial hate and blocks in the game most of your high risk build dmg is being stoped. MS is not being used because its the end all be all dmg skill but because its not a projcial skill and deals with short blocks.

When you look at other classes who got unblockable to deal with this projcial hate and block spam added to the game its denial to say that ele did not get such things because anet "loves" the ele class.

Lets not get into support builds of tempest and how much is lacks viable boon support and real self stab support making it a very sub part support class.

Anet hates ele or at least dose not think about the ele class when they update this game. I am not sure what is worst being hated or being ignored it all comes out to the same end though.

You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

All weaver skills are projectiles ontop of having big tells and being very slow. All skills that are dmged aimed are blockable as well. Ele was the worst kit to deal with proje hate because of the lack of unblockables, quickness to speed up attks and the simple slowness of the attks. Scpter is nearly a melee wepon in its game play if you realy do sit back and try to use your ranged attks on scepter your likely to not get any real dmg out and still be with in the kill ranged of most players.

Even support ele pays a price for projctile hate as one of its strong healing effects is from its water 1 staff spam that is eatten up by projcti hate. Something that ALL of the other support classes do not have to deal with.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
You probably misunderstood what I meant when I wrote it. Elementalists take staff in WvW because it's the best tool for control and support large amount of players not because it's the best weaponset ever for killing in zergs. It's just silly to argue that it's an inadapted range dps weapon when your main purpose for taking it is different.

NB.: A range elementalist can always slot lightning hammer and use it to bash it's way in a melee fight just like other professions can switch to a melee weaponset. The only side effect is that you can't maintain lightning hammer, that's all (or you can liken that to a very long cool down on weapon swap).

Given that staff eles are not built to be on the front-line, lightning hammer is a little impractical. And staff is by its very nature the best weapon for killing in zergs.

You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

It doesn't just affect staff autoattack. On staff weaver, you have four hard-hitting skills that can all be reflected or blocked (Plasma Blast, Pressure Blast, Pile Driver and Pyroclastic Blast) which scuppers DPS potential considerably. As Tempest fulfills the support role, I don't see any viable support weaver builds with staff so naturally, I'd like it if they removed the healing component from Pressure Blast and just increased the damage. Scepter is also 900 range, being mostly single-target, and so not really workable for large-scale fights; it used to be the case that you could play a skirmisher/ganker who focused targets but since they nerfed the damage, it's a lot of risk for a paltry reward.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
You probably misunderstood what I meant when I wrote it. Elementalists take staff in WvW because it's the best tool for control and support large amount of players not because it's the best weaponset ever for killing in zergs. It's just silly to argue that it's an inadapted range dps weapon when your main purpose for taking it is different.

NB.: A range elementalist can always slot lightning hammer and use it to bash it's way in a melee fight just like other professions can switch to a melee weaponset. The only side effect is that you can't maintain lightning hammer, that's all (or you can liken that to a very long cool down on weapon swap).

Given that staff eles are not built to be on the front-line, lightning hammer is a little impractical. And staff is by its very nature the best weapon for killing in zergs.

Would you have prefered if I suggested conjure shield... The point is more that the option for melee exist when one have to deal with it. To be honest, when I see elementalists player begging for a weapon switch because when they play a range weapon they can't react at melee range while spiting on conjure weapon, it always feel like looking at starving men refusing to eat the free cheap meal and asking for an expensive one instead.

You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

It doesn't just affect staff autoattack. On staff weaver, you have four hard-hitting skills that can all be reflected or blocked (Plasma Blast, Pressure Blast, Pile Driver and Pyroclastic Blast) which scuppers DPS potential considerably. As Tempest fulfills the support role, I don't see any viable support weaver builds with staff so naturally, I'd like it if they removed the healing component from Pressure Blast and just increased the damage. Scepter is also 900 range, being mostly single-target, and so not really workable for large-scale fights; it used to be the case that you could play a skirmisher/ganker who focused targets but since they nerfed the damage, it's a lot of risk for a paltry reward.

I understand that staff weaver skills get hard countered by range hate, however, it doesn't mean that staff doesn't keep most of it's range aoe that disregard range hate. Now, even if they removed the healing component from pressure blast, you'd still have 2 aoe heal (even 3 if we count monsoon and it's generous 3s of regen every 1/4s) on staff weaver.

As for scepter, I'd say that most weaponskills that diregard range hate have the same specificities and that the elementalist don't really need to be jealous of other professions in this area.

Can i ask you eles something? do you guys ever combine the deep freeze with protection? i mean its 50% reduction and a bit more, because i think using earth for protect is likle 44% so with deep freeze its 10% thats 54% dmg reduction total if it can be combined.Wouldn't you say thats worth it?

@Dadnir.5038 said:
You probably misunderstood what I meant when I wrote it. Elementalists take staff in WvW because it's the best tool for control and support large amount of players not because it's the best weaponset ever for killing in zergs. It's just silly to argue that it's an inadapted range dps weapon when your main purpose for taking it is different.

NB.: A range elementalist can always slot lightning hammer and use it to bash it's way in a melee fight just like other professions can switch to a melee weaponset. The only side effect is that you can't maintain lightning hammer, that's all (or you can liken that to a very long cool down on weapon swap).

Given that staff eles are not built to be on the front-line, lightning hammer is a little impractical. And staff is by its very nature the best weapon for killing in zergs.

Would you have prefered if I suggested conjure shield... The point is more that the option for melee exist when one have to deal with it. To be honest, when I see elementalists player begging for a weapon switch because when they play a range weapon they can't react at melee range while spiting on conjure weapon, it always feel like looking at starving men refusing to eat the free cheap meal and asking for an expensive one instead.

You seem very affected by this projectile hate that only affect staff auto attack... More seriously, elementalist is maybe one of the professions which is the most equiped to face projectile hate with it's range kits. I'd even dare say that most profession that auto attack at range in WvW suffer from the exact same issue with range hate. Now, if you find MS and other skill really that bad, maybe it's time for you to discover the scepter with it's marvelous fire and air auto attack non affected by range hate. You could even take the focus with the scepter and spitefully add your own range hate with swirling winds.

It doesn't just affect staff autoattack. On staff weaver, you have four hard-hitting skills that can all be reflected or blocked (Plasma Blast, Pressure Blast, Pile Driver and Pyroclastic Blast) which scuppers DPS potential considerably. As Tempest fulfills the support role, I don't see any viable support weaver builds with staff so naturally, I'd like it if they removed the healing component from Pressure Blast and just increased the damage. Scepter is also 900 range, being mostly single-target, and so not really workable for large-scale fights; it used to be the case that you could play a skirmisher/ganker who focused targets but since they nerfed the damage, it's a lot of risk for a paltry reward.

I understand that staff weaver skills get hard countered by range hate, however, it doesn't mean that staff doesn't keep most of it's range aoe that disregard range hate. Now, even if they removed the healing component from pressure blast, you'd still have 2 aoe heal (even 3 if we count monsoon and it's generous 3s of regen every 1/4s) on staff weaver.

As for scepter, I'd say that most weaponskills that diregard range hate have the same specificities and that the elementalist don't really need to be jealous of other professions in this area.

Monsoon is a projical it will get counter. The only tool in the game to deal with projectile hate is unblockables.

Developers are biased towards Elementalists because they deal too much damage on static Raid bosses while having babysitters to buff them, heal them, and revive them. When you only care about following your rotation, that is bloated with filler conjure skills to make the rotation-meta-slaves say "my rotation is complex!", Elementalist is good. When you don't have the luxury of a babysitter, like in any content outside Raids/Fractals, then they are really weak because the rotation (especially including Conjures) is impossible to follow when you have to also look at your survival. But Arenanet has shown that they balance around raid benchmarks lately so that's not going to change for a while, as long as Elementalists over-perform in those, they will get this kind of treatment.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
I understand that staff weaver skills get hard countered by range hate, however, it doesn't mean that staff doesn't keep most of it's range aoe that disregard range hate. Now, even if they removed the healing component from pressure blast, you'd still have 2 aoe heal (even 3 if we count monsoon and it's generous 3s of regen every 1/4s) on staff weaver.

As for scepter, I'd say that most weaponskills that diregard range hate have the same specificities and that the elementalist don't really need to be jealous of other professions in this area.

What's your point? Besides the fact the regen is so negligible that it's absolutely useless, I don't want the healing component at all so by all means remove it. And given that 1) it's highly unlikely one would build for support on a staff weaver and 2) most people would only be hit by one pulse, I'd hardly call that generous...

I don't care for weaponswap myself and have yet to be convinced that condensing attunements from four to two for that reason would be a good change. I didn't get your second point.

Engineer (mid-high tier in PvP): "Overcharged Shot hitting at 1200 range instead of 600? No bug here, the tooltip must be wrong..."

That elemental attunement change pretty much destroyed the spec and made it hilariously clunky to play. It's probably the least satisfying thing in the game right now. I'd love to hear the reasoning as to why the already strong engineer only had its tooltip changed, while the trash tier elementalist got one of its most crucial traits cut in half.

Engineer (mid-high tier in PvP): "Overcharged Shot hitting at 1200 range instead of 600? No bug here, the tooltip must be wrong..."

That elemental attunement change pretty much destroyed the spec and made it hilariously clunky to play. It's probably the least satisfying thing in the game right now. I'd love to hear the reasoning as to why the already strong engineer only had its tooltip changed, while the trash tier elementalist got one of its most crucial traits cut in half.

Yeah I still find myself double attuning in air at the start of the match. It's hard to get rid of bad (?) habits. I wish Lightning Strike received the same treatment. It was fun watching a thief/mesmer running away and receive divine punishment.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
I understand that staff weaver skills get hard countered by range hate, however, it doesn't mean that staff doesn't keep most of it's range aoe that disregard range hate. Now, even if they removed the healing component from pressure blast, you'd still have 2 aoe heal (even 3 if we count monsoon and it's generous 3s of regen every 1/4s) on staff weaver.

As for scepter, I'd say that most weaponskills that diregard range hate have the same specificities and that the elementalist don't really need to be jealous of other professions in this area.

What's your point? Besides the fact the regen is so negligible that it's absolutely useless, I don't want the healing component at all so by all means remove it. And given that 1) it's highly unlikely one would build for support on a staff weaver and 2) most people would only be hit by one pulse, I'd hardly call that generous...

I don't care for weaponswap myself and have yet to be convinced that condensing attunements from four to two for that reason would be a good change. I didn't get your second point.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
I understand that staff weaver skills get hard countered by range hate, however, it doesn't mean that staff doesn't keep most of it's range aoe that disregard range hate. Now, even if they removed the healing component from pressure blast, you'd still have 2 aoe heal (even 3 if we count monsoon and it's generous 3s of regen every 1/4s) on staff weaver.

As for scepter, I'd say that most weaponskills that diregard range hate have the same specificities and that the elementalist don't really need to be jealous of other professions in this area.

What's your point? Besides the fact the regen is so negligible that it's absolutely useless, I don't want the healing component at all so by all means remove it. And given that 1) it's highly unlikely one would build for support on a staff weaver and 2) most people would only be hit by one pulse, I'd hardly call that generous...

My point is that there is already enough support on staff to invalidate your argument.

I don't care for weaponswap myself and have yet to be convinced that condensing attunements from four to two for that reason would be a good change. I didn't get your second point.

You may don't care about it but I initially answered someone that cared about it and my answer was directly correlated to this fact.

@Jski.6180 said:
Monsoon is a projical it will get counter. The only tool in the game to deal with projectile hate is unblockables.

Some of the weaver scepter skills are projectiles as well.

So, which weaver offensive trait are you willing to give up to have your unblockable effect on dual attunment skill?

EoR.

Jski, I love you but please, no (though at this point, besides the 10% damage, EoR doesn't deserve to be a GM trait, thanks to successive nerfs).

That's where the difference of point of view between a person that only care for gamemodes opposing players against each other and a person that care for all gamemodes lead to.

Personnally I think EoR should get rid of the damage increase and gain a flat 30% to 50% critical hit chance in it's stead. Which in return would free weaver from the necessity to gear with precision and with the 2nd bonus, promote taking vitality for even more crit chance. Which would increase weaver "passive" survivability in all gamemodes.

As for which trait I'd favor for unblockable effect, I'd say elemental polyphony would be a good pick. And to balance for the damage loss from the 2 previous changes, swift revenge damage buff would be pushed to 10% and master's fortitude stats convertion would be change to make vitality the base of the conversion not the one that benefit from it (in other word: 5% vitality converted to power and condition damage). Now, this end up with damage loss to the maximum potential damage but also make the weaver sturdier which in return make it's dps easier to land in all gamemodes.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
I understand that staff weaver skills get hard countered by range hate, however, it doesn't mean that staff doesn't keep most of it's range aoe that disregard range hate. Now, even if they removed the healing component from pressure blast, you'd still have 2 aoe heal (even 3 if we count monsoon and it's generous 3s of regen every 1/4s) on staff weaver.

As for scepter, I'd say that most weaponskills that diregard range hate have the same specificities and that the elementalist don't really need to be jealous of other professions in this area.

What's your point? Besides the fact the regen is so negligible that it's absolutely useless, I don't want the healing component at all so by all means remove it. And given that 1) it's highly unlikely one would build for support on a staff weaver and 2) most people would only be hit by one pulse, I'd hardly call that generous...

My point is that there is already enough support on staff to invalidate your argument.

I don't care for weaponswap myself and have yet to be convinced that condensing attunements from four to two for that reason would be a good change. I didn't get your second point.

You may don't care about it but I initially answered someone that cared about it and my answer was directly correlated to this fact.

@Jski.6180 said:
Monsoon is a projical it will get counter. The only tool in the game to deal with projectile hate is unblockables.

Some of the weaver scepter skills are projectiles as well.

So, which weaver offensive trait are you willing to give up to have your unblockable effect on dual attunment skill?

EoR.

Jski, I love you but please, no (though at this point, besides the 10% damage, EoR doesn't deserve to be a GM trait, thanks to successive nerfs).

That's where the difference of point of view between a person that only care for gamemodes opposing players against each other and a person that care for all gamemodes lead to.

Personnally I think EoR should get rid of the damage increase and gain a flat 30% to 50% critical hit chance in it's stead. Which in return would free weaver from the necessity to gear with precision and with the 2nd bonus, promote taking vitality for even more crit chance. Which would increase weaver "passive" survivability in all gamemodes.

As for which trait I'd favor for unblockable effect, I'd say elemental polyphony would be a good pick. And to balance for the damage loss from the 2 previous changes, swift revenge damage buff would be pushed to 10% and master's fortitude stats convertion would be change to make vitality the base of the conversion not the one that benefit from it (in other word: 5% vitality converted to power and condition damage). Now, this end up with damage loss to the maximum potential damage but also make the weaver sturdier which in return make it's dps easier to land in all gamemodes.

As is EoR already freed weaver from any need from high precision with in reason as you want some precision for the air 7% precision goes to crit dmg.

As for game types it comes down to this pve is gw2 light. You simply do not need all of the effects of skill in gw2 to play pve but you need all of the diffrent effects on skills to play pvp. Unblockables are worthless in pve but are every thing in pvp. The only things of worth in pve are raw dmg power / condi, dmg -% mostly power, and healing just healing power. Pvp you need unblockables dmg or hard to deal with dmg types so mostly condi or power attks that hit harder vs lower hp targets, dmg -% mostly as way of blocks evasion or simply do not get hit effects, and condi clears barriers and passive heals over time as well as blunt healing.

Pvp needs all of the effects of gw2 or the full game of gw2 is in pvp where in pve your only getting part of the game. So for real balancing you MUST look at pvp with only an eye on max numbers for pve.

Short version: Pve only about raw numbers pvp is about added effects as well as raw numbers.

My build in wvw (keep in mind you get +30 to all most of the time in wvw also if you cant have perma fury run runes of rage it helps).

Try it out all risk for viability not high reward. The high reward in gw2 is though def skills like blocks and projita hate. Ask your self is this work worth it when you can just go rev or scorge and do high enofe dmg that is much harder to deal with.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
My point is that there is already enough support on staff to invalidate your argument.

No, it doesn't... Because support on staff weaver of all things was never a concern for me and shouldn't be for anyone else; it's not a support-oriented spec. If you're playing staff weaver, you're doing damage and will not go out of your way to attune into water twice. Did you read anything I said at all? What was my argument?

@Dadnir.5038 said:
That's where the difference of point of view between a person that only care for gamemodes opposing players against each other and a person that care for all gamemodes lead to.

Personnally I think EoR should get rid of the damage increase and gain a flat 30% to 50% critical hit chance in it's stead. Which in return would free weaver from the necessity to gear with precision and with the 2nd bonus, promote taking vitality for even more crit chance. Which would increase weaver "passive" survivability in all gamemodes.

As for which trait I'd favor for unblockable effect, I'd say elemental polyphony would be a good pick. And to balance for the damage loss from the 2 previous changes, swift revenge damage buff would be pushed to 10% and master's fortitude stats convertion would be change to make vitality the base of the conversion not the one that benefit from it (in other word: 5% vitality converted to power and condition damage). Now, this end up with damage loss to the maximum potential damage but also make the weaver sturdier which in return make it's dps easier to land in all gamemodes.

Except players benefit from gearing with precision because it converts to ferocity if they pick Ferocious Winds in Air, which most of them will. I'm not trying to be facetious but I have to ask, do you even play ele? I'm fine with staff being countered by reflects/blocks but what I would like is for skills with a long wind-up to hurt when they hit. Instead of doing all of this work to try and recreate what weaver was like at launch, why not just revert the nerfs?

I've already professed my fondness for Jski but I think he's also in favour of rendering weaver obsolete to save core ele which almost nobody plays. Why concede and kowtow? The diminishing returns attached to Meteor Shower and all of the nerfs between March and July were directly intended to unseat ele from the top of the golem DPS benchmarks. I think I've been quite clear that I don't care at all for raids but, as far as I know, unblockable isn't required in PvE so could you clarify which of the two of us cares for all game modes versus PvP/WvW?

@Dadnir.5038 said:
My point is that there is already enough support on staff to invalidate your argument.

No, it doesn't... Because support on staff weaver of all things was never a concern for me and shouldn't be for anyone else; it's not a support-oriented spec. If you're playing staff weaver, you're doing damage and will not go out of your way to attune into water twice. Did you read anything I said at all? What was my argument?

Ah, but that's your point of view. It doesn't mean that staff weaver cannot be used as a support build even if you don't concern yourself with it. You just can't restrict your point of view to what you think should be better regarding how you want to play something. You have to also take into account the fact that this something can be played in a different way. This is just like people thinking that scourge should be played only as a condi spec or reaper should only be played as a power spec, it's a narrow point of view that shouldn't ever be taken into account when it come to balance.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
That's where the difference of point of view between a person that only care for gamemodes opposing players against each other and a person that care for all gamemodes lead to.

Personnally I think EoR should get rid of the damage increase and gain a flat 30% to 50% critical hit chance in it's stead. Which in return would free weaver from the necessity to gear with precision and with the 2nd bonus, promote taking vitality for even more crit chance. Which would increase weaver "passive" survivability in all gamemodes.

As for which trait I'd favor for unblockable effect, I'd say elemental polyphony would be a good pick. And to balance for the damage loss from the 2 previous changes, swift revenge damage buff would be pushed to 10% and master's fortitude stats convertion would be change to make vitality the base of the conversion not the one that benefit from it (in other word: 5% vitality converted to power and condition damage). Now, this end up with damage loss to the maximum potential damage but also make the weaver sturdier which in return make it's dps easier to land in all gamemodes.

Except players benefit from gearing with precision because it converts to ferocity if they pick Ferocious Winds in Air, which most of them will. I'm not trying to be facetious but I have to ask, do you even play ele? I'm fine with staff being countered by reflects/blocks but what I would like is for skills with a long wind-up to hurt when they hit. Instead of doing all of this work to try and recreate what weaver was like at launch, why not just revert the nerfs?

I play elementalist as much as I play all other professions and I do this since launch (not launch of HoT or PoF, launch of the vanilla game), this help a lot when it come to look at the whole picture. I also roam the GW2's forum since a long time and the thing that elementalists tend to complain the most about is their low health pool and their inability to deal easily a great deal of damage in PvP. All in all the issue of the elementalist in PvP isn't the "damage" but the ability to land them while keeping their survivability to a reasonable level. That's why I suggest ANet to just let the elementalist enjoy a spec that allow them to gear for high health point.

As for the dual attunment skill (because I imagine that it's what you mean by long wind up skills) I agree that they are globally underwhelmings in both attack speed and cool down.

However, the nerfs on weaver were due most of the time. I don't say that the nerfs on core were (they obviously weren't since tempest used to be balanced before HoT) but weaver's one were. At the very begining ANet only had to change EoR to avoid the huge imbalance due to the spike of ferocity that wasn't there previously.

I've already professed my fondness for Jski but I think he's also in favour of rendering weaver obsolete to save core ele which almost nobody plays. Why concede and kowtow? The diminishing returns attached to Meteor Shower and all of the nerfs between March and July were directly intended to unseat ele from the top of the golem DPS benchmarks. I think I've been quite clear that I don't care at all for raids but, as far as I know, unblockable isn't required in PvE so could you clarify which of the two of us cares for all game modes versus PvP/WvW?

I don't think either that the diminishing return on MS and other "impact" skills was a wise change, like I said, tempest used to be balanced and the thing that created the imbalance of damage on weaver was EoR and it's spike of ferocity. Had they just removed EoR from the start, weaver and core wouldn't have had reason to be tweeked like they did. The problem is that ANet always try to balance things around what create the problematic instead of acknowledging from the start that something is problematic. And then they keep the poor balance choice they did even after they address the problematic thing (It's not a process unique to elementalist so there is no reason to think that they are particularly biased against the elementalist, it's just poor choice of balance that stem from a lack of foresight).

NB.: Unblockable isn't requiered in PvE but that doesn't mean that some mobs can't block a few attack (slimes as well as a few humanoid mobs for example have this ability), this mean that whatever the gamemode unblockable stay a convenience.

@Dadnir.5038 said:
My point is that there is already enough support on staff to invalidate your argument.

No, it doesn't... Because support on staff weaver of all things was never a concern for me and shouldn't be for anyone else; it's not a support-oriented spec. If you're playing staff weaver, you're doing damage and will not go out of your way to attune into water twice. Did you read anything I said at all? What was my argument?

Ah, but that's your point of view. It doesn't mean that staff weaver cannot be used as a support build even if you don't concern yourself with it. You just can't restrict your point of view to what you think should be better regarding how you want to play something. You have to also take into account the fact that this something can be played in a different way. This is just like people thinking that scourge should be played only as a condi spec or reaper should only be played as a power spec, it's a narrow point of view that shouldn't ever be taken into account when it come to balance.

This sort of relativism gets you nowhere. You could do anything. After all, they did market the game under, "Play how you want," but this isn't strictly true. You can have patchwork builds which are 'workable' but never really 'viable', and there is a difference between meta and viable. By your logic, anything on staff ele could be billed as support if only because it has an autoattack in Water Blast which heals. There is, however, a reason why they balance around the meta at large and not around niche or fringe builds.

Aquatic Stance is thoroughly mediocre. There're no support-oriented traits in the Weaver line. They're not going to balance around 3 seconds of regen on Monsoon. Invigorating Strikes doesn't have enough appeal as a GM trait and is overshadowed by Woven Stride because of its synergy with Cleansing Water and the solution isn't to nerf Woven Stride but to tweak or give something to Invigorating Strikes so that the GM traits compete with but are also distinct from one another.

@Silence.3702 said:
Maybe its because they have some kind of a balance rotation where they decide to make one class really Tier S while keeping most of them tier A as well as making 1 or two tier B? a
because balance is supposed to be a scenario where all classes are evenly strong and its skill which is supposedly supposed to make the difference?

One thing i know is for sure, balancing Ele would take merely 10 minutes as its plainly adjusting by increasing and decreasing value lines untill weaver is a vailable 1v1 class, plainly decreasing massive healing power for more damage would be sufficient. it seems that evs dont /want/ to balance Ele other than trying to avoid making a balance mistake

Anytime I see a comment like this I am convinced that the person who said it doesn't understand anything about how to balance a profession (or class). If you honestly think balance would take 10 minutes, make your own game, spend 10 minutes balancing it and then let us know how that worked out for you.

@steki.1478 said:
If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

It may very well take 10 minutes per class. Though let's not forget that the people who are in charge of balancing the game have an insuperable ignorance and lack of judgment when inspecting the intricacies of a class, and their place in the health of the game as well as their ability to be fun and interesting. The Elementalist doesn't have any access to quickness? Let's give Reaper and Holosmith permanent quickness! The Warrior is finally balanced? Let's nerf it again! Let's make it so it loses more matchups than it wins by a factor of two. Ele still isn' doing damage after 3 years of not doing damage? Well, let's give fire measly condition clear and nerf The Elementalist's only viable build some more! There is no logic when it comes to this balancing effort. The game is worse this patch than it was the last one and it'll never get better.

I don't think you're discussing balance issues here but a difference in vision in what should happen. The idea that the balance team is ignorant is highly amusing. The problem with balance is that everyone's idea of balance is always colored by how well they feel their favorite profession is performing vs how well they think other professions are doing or frustrations with what other professions do to them. Even issues that are actually L2P issues are subsumed into the rubric of bad balance. But balance just isn't about the here and now but also the future. Balance patches include fixes for things but also adjustments for changes that are likely coming down the line but need to be tested and prepared for before being implemented. Balance is a lot more long-term than what most players consider.

There is plenty of logic to the balance effort. The problem is that players never get to see the full picture that that logic is based on. Since players are never privy to the entire picture things will never make sense.

@Silence.3702 said:
Maybe its because they have some kind of a balance rotation where they decide to make one class really Tier S while keeping most of them tier A as well as making 1 or two tier B? a
because balance is supposed to be a scenario where all classes are evenly strong and its skill which is supposedly supposed to make the difference?

One thing i know is for sure, balancing Ele would take merely 10 minutes as its plainly adjusting by increasing and decreasing value lines untill weaver is a vailable 1v1 class, plainly decreasing massive healing power for more damage would be sufficient. it seems that evs dont /want/ to balance Ele other than trying to avoid making a balance mistake

Anytime I see a comment like this I am convinced that the person who said it doesn't understand anything about how to balance a profession (or class). If you honestly think balance would take 10 minutes, make your own game, spend 10 minutes balancing it and then let us know how that worked out for you.

@steki.1478 said:
If balancing took 10 minutes per class, game would've been balanced 1 month after PoF.

It may very well take 10 minutes per class. Though let's not forget that the people who are in charge of balancing the game have an insuperable ignorance and lack of judgment when inspecting the intricacies of a class, and their place in the health of the game as well as their ability to be fun and interesting. The Elementalist doesn't have any access to quickness? Let's give Reaper and Holosmith permanent quickness! The Warrior is finally balanced? Let's nerf it again! Let's make it so it loses more matchups than it wins by a factor of two. Ele still isn' doing damage after 3 years of not doing damage? Well, let's give fire measly condition clear and nerf The Elementalist's only viable build some more! There is no logic when it comes to this balancing effort. The game is worse this patch than it was the last one and it'll never get better.

I don't think you're discussing balance issues here but a difference in vision in what should happen. The idea that the balance team is ignorant is highly amusing. The problem with balance is that everyone's idea of balance is always colored by how well they feel their favorite profession is performing vs how well they think other professions are doing or frustrations with what other professions do to them. Even issues that are actually L2P issues are subsumed into the rubric of bad balance. But balance just isn't about the here and now but also the future. Balance patches include fixes for things but also adjustments for changes that are likely coming down the line but need to be tested and prepared for before being implemented. Balance is a lot more long-term than what most players consider.

There is plenty of logic to the balance effort. The problem is that players never get to see the full picture that that logic is based on. Since players are never privy to the entire picture things will never make sense.

Okay so seeing as I'm so self-absorbed my scope doesn't encompass the whole of balance across all classes, let's look at some facts here:
Reaper was buffed with perma quickness
Holosmith was buffed with perma quickness
Revenant was soft buffed
Ele had a slight nerf to its only sub-meta slightly viable build.
Deadeye: No real changes
Guardian: Changes to staff but no changes to what people play, except harrier firebrand is now nerfed.
Spellbreaker: nerfed.
Let's see what this did: Pre-patch: Reaper and Scourge had more or less equal representation in ranked scenes before this terrible patch. Now? Reapers account for 90% of all necromancers you see, HURTING build diversity.
While revenant was slightly buffed, the buff to holosmith and reaper together made revenant an obsolete option when before it was a top tier class. Now revenants barely appear in any ranked scenes. This HURTS build diversity.
Ele: Hasn't been meta for an entire year, not one build it has had since the launch of PoF has survived arena-net's ridiculous nerfs, and their terrible, uninformed, and useless attempt at buffing elementalist proved that they know so little about the class and think so little of the suggestions of hundreds of elementalists mains that they believed they had enough brain cells to give ele representation in the meta when they ultimately failed. Ele is now more easily beaten by reapers and holosmiths due to their permanent quickness so this HURTS build diversity.
Deadeye is the ultimate zero counterplay build and they didn't think this is a problem... but Riptide was? LOL.
Anet sucks at balancing.

I dont think there bias at all....i just dont think they underatand there own game/class mechanics or the synergys that happen with traits and skills...time and time again they do balance changes that the community didnt ask for or changes that nerfed the class into oblivion that im sure they didnt intend but happened because of there own lack of understanding of the class.

@Eddbopkins.2630 said:
I dont think there bias at all....i just dont think they underatand there own game/class mechanics or the synergys that happen with traits and skills...time and time again they do balance changes that the community didnt ask for or changes that nerfed the class into oblivion that im sure they didnt intend but happened because of there own lack of understanding of the class.

Same thing just be a different name realty.

What it comes down to is when you look at classes like rev who is effectively a heavry armor ele and how they buff its ability to do dmg and support in the same time interval as an ele it comes off as ele being the one left out in the cold and rev or ele like classes being given far more.

The lack of strong boon support is allways going to hold ele back every class gives out fury and protection and every class has perma self vigor. There is no point to ele support effects when the non support builds give out the same effects on a perma level.

Its comes down to ele is more its gear then a class. The class of ele is just a pure skin its the zerker combo or healing combo gear that going to do the real work and IS the real class. What you could even call a class like that the armor mages? or i guess you can call ele the cosplay mages.

Originally they could do it all. They could heal an unlimited amount of players for a large amount, CC unlimited enemies/enemy players- dish out huge damage while being able to sustain. However they had a high skill cap. Their hitbox AOE skills was toned down to 5 targets - completely understandable. However over time elementalist was gradually nerfed in the sustain department and their DPS remained untouched, their personal sustain became non existant in 2014-15. It was a high risk low reward class that provided only high DPS in groups so long they were willing to baby sit the supreme glass ele. Fast forward some time- and we were given the celestial meta. It was the perfect synergy between damage/self sustain however it was too OP in the right hands. It was of course Nerfed or taken away. Tempest was given to us- meant to be a sustain-y class, sustain was too great for others to handle and in the right hands unkillable. Nerfed. Some liked the "heal meta" for ele- but that wasn't what they were meant to be. Ele is supposed to be a jack of all trades master of none /hybrid class for a game that does not reward hybrid play, thanks to DPS checks in raids and so on. All thanks to the constant nerfs to the class for reasons such as "too OP" which really means a the player knows how to rotate, apply pressure and when to sustain. Or too much DPS for a light armor class. but take away their DPS and ele has nothing to really provide that other classes don't already do better. But in the end it's still retains a pretty decent sized skill cap to learn properly with engi having the highest IMO. It can still DPS nicely so long as they don't get another damage reduction % per hit again. But if you want to learn how to survive on ele- go zerk. play with your skills. don't face tank with staff. It's like if you could combine tempest+weaver you might have the perfect ele ideally. However weaver is DPS oriented with soso personal sustain. Tempest is support- but firebrand and boonshare classes like chrono and rev make it obsolete in zerg settings. I mean auras might be a thing in huge fights like zergs if they can get some relevant boons to go along with the buff given like resistance or quickness/alacrity etc. not saying those have to be the boons given- just an example.

I think most of the people who said ele is too OP were people who wanted to play other classes in raids too, but as i seen before the big nerfs happened the LFGs were full of people asking for Weaver specifically(talking about raid and T4). The thing that ele got nerfed is because people did not let other classes in raids. Thats a sad thing but not a class problem at all, it was a community problem. Now some months after the nerf we see Deadeye on the top of the benchmarks(Mostly) still very few people playing it. So from this i would say that people were enjoyig playing ele, i mean who does not want to see meteors showering on bosses? Devs are not baised towards elementalists they just dont know how it works, as others said it before me.They clearly took the high damage skills, nerfed them and tought they did a great job, after some hours it turned out they completely killed core and tempest builds using staff and well, some player´s fun. I was enjoying ele, and i still do, I even got along with using sword now if i want DPS, but really, forcing a light armor/low health pool class into meele range is kind of dumb, isnt it? I mean DE has riffle with 1500 range, engi has granades and riffle+photon 4.So basically with ele if you want to keep safe distance you give up your damage so you can survive, if you go meele you will most likely die if the druid is doing something else and not healing the group.
So all i wanted to say, the Dev team were not thinking what they were doing they wanted to nerf it, they did it. This is not the first occasion this happening they did the same to mirage back at the time when it was confusion based. They wanted to nerf confusion in PvP they did it. Not thinking about that MAYBE it could affect the PvE mirage builds too, took them 2-3 days while they figured out what to do to fix it. I think with ele there is a longer time for this since i think there are more devs playing mesmer than ele, i mean this is obvious
Not saying anything about people leaving after the nerfs enjoying the class while doing very good damage is the core of enjoying the game(PVE aspect), doing very good damage but falling asleep on DE by rotating 5 buttons is taking a lot of the enjoyment